


As You Walk on By (Will You Call My Name?)

by SpideyFics



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Don't ask me how - he just did, Everyone forgets Peter is Spider-Man, Gen, I dunno if speculation is spoilery, Peter made a deal with the devil, Please Don't Hate Me, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Potentially spoilery?, Reality is rewritten, no beta this is stream of consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpideyFics/pseuds/SpideyFics
Summary: Peter Parker made a deal with the Devil and now he's paying his dues.
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Michelle Jones
Comments: 27
Kudos: 37





	As You Walk on By (Will You Call My Name?)

He walks down Manhattan Avenue, snowflakes settling in his hair as he alternates between checking the building numbers and the address written on the piece of paper he holds. He’s not really familiar with Brooklyn, but the _Brooklyn Daily Eagle_ ran an article about the holiday window art in a donut shop called Peter Pan, crediting the artist as Michelle Jones, and his heart had jumped right up into his throat.

He’s wearing Ben’s old jacket with the broken zip. It has to be twenty years old, the padding bunched awkwardly in the back where May had tried to save money on dry cleaning by throwing it in the washing machine, and he should be cold, but he’s flushed with nervy excitement.

He's going to see MJ again.

He knows this probably isn’t a good idea.

He's doing it anyway.

It feels strange to be walking down the street as Peter Parker without anyone batting an eyelid, after six months of being public enemy number one. Spider-Man might still be wanted, but Peter Parker is just a dorky loner wanted by nobody other than his Aunt May.

He finally sees the bakery, recognizes MJ’s artwork in the windows. There’s a penguin holding a menorah, and it makes him pause for a moment, remembering the hand-drawn Chanukah card she’d given him the first holiday after the Blip, featuring very same penguin. But then he sees her through the window, placing fresh donnuts on a tray, and he’s overcome with the need to see her again. He takes five big strides and yanks the door open, practically bursting into the store.

MJ looks up as he walks in, raising an eyebrow. She’s wearing a look of disinterest, and a long, white sleeved tee under a truly hideous mint green tunic with a pink collar and cuffs. “What can I do for you?”

She’s there right in front of him, alive and well, and it’s almost overwhelming. He suddenly regrets coming to find her, her lack of recognition cutting him to the core, but he’s here now, staring at her with his mouth gaping open like he’s some kind of dumbass fish, so he squints at the menu behind her. “Uh – a small Ho Ho Ho hot chocolate to go, please.”

She fills a cup with chocolate powder and milk, holding it under the steamer. “Hey, you go to Midtown, right?” she says, looking back over her shoulder. “You’re in B stream.”

That’s news to him, but he rolls with it. “Yeah. Peter. I mean, I’m Peter Parker.”

“Alliterative,” she says approvingly. “I’m Michelle.” She finishes steaming the hot chocolate and holds up a can of whipped cream. “Cream?” she asks, shaking the can when he nods and squirting a generous amount on top of the chocolate before sprinkling it with crushed peppermints. “Do you want any donuts? Maybe a bagel?” She clicks the lid down on his drink and places it on top of the display cabinet.

The hot chocolate has already blown his budget, but he looks at the five-dollar donuts anyway. A red one catches his eye, decorated with a spider web. “Hey, is that a Spider-Man donut?” he says. “Do you guys support him?”

“We’re pro-Spidey,” she confirms. “The proceeds from that donut go to the _Citizens to Defend Spidey_ fund.”

There goes the rest of his budget. “I’ll take two – _Spidey-Nuts_?” He squints at the label, thinking – _hoping_ – he’s read it wrong, but nope, Spidey-Nut is there in the neat, flowing handwriting he recognizes as MJ’s. “You remembered the hyphen,” he says weakly, trying not to die of mortification.

“The hyphen is important,” she says seriously, wrapping two donuts in waxed paper and dropping them into a bag that he crams into one of his jacket pockets. “That’s $15.” As she holds out the payment terminal for him to tap his card, he spots a necklace – _the_ necklace – in the vee of her tunic. He has no idea why it exists in this reality, but he’s glad it does. It reassures him that the last three years of his life weren’t some kind of fever dream.

“I like your necklace,” he says, and she reflexively looks down, hooking the chain with her thumb to let the broken pendant dangle. “A black dahlia, right? Like the murder?”

She smiles then, the shy grin she’d given him on Tower bridge, six months and an unaltered reality ago. “How did you know?”

“I used to know someone was into true crime,” he says, making himself look up from her softly curving lips to meet her gaze. “How come it’s broken?”

She shrugs, tucking it back under her tunic. “I don’t actually know? I just found it on my desk. I kind of like it better broken, though. I don’t know its story, but it feels – special, somehow.”

It’s suddenly all too much and he knows he has to get out of there. “I gotta go,” he mumbles, taking his cup. “Thanks.”

MJ looks startled. “OK. Maybe I’ll see you at school?”

“Maybe.” He summons a half-hearted smile and leaves the store as quickly as he entered, the cup clutched in his hand. He drops it in the trash without even taking a sip.

He feels sick, can’t stand that MJ looked at him like he was basically a stranger. But the alternative – MJ bleeding out in his arms, her last breath used to murmur his name – is far, far worse, and he would rather have her alive and not part of his life, than dead, all her passion and intelligence and compassion snuffed out in a moment.

He rewrote reality for her.

He erased any memory anyone in the world had of Peter Parker being Spider-Man to make sure she lived.

He made a deal with the Devil to save her life, and now he was paying his dues.

***

MJ locks the door and flips over the _back in five!_ sign before she heads out to the back of the store. She doesn’t know why, but she feels out of step, discombobulated, like something in the universe had shifted that she wasn’t quite aware of. “Hey, Ned?” she says, stepping into the prep room.

Ned looks up, his hands sunk deep into a ball of dough. “You OK?” he says, his eyebrows knit in concern. “You look weird.”

She sits on a battered stool, tucking her feet behind the bar at the base. “That quiet kid from school just came in,” she says, holding her necklace between thumb and forefinger and twisting it mindlessly back and forth. “The one who wears all the geeky science tees.”

“Peter?” Ned rubs his palms together over the sink, sloughing off little balls of dough before washing his hands thoroughly. “We used to be friends when we were kids, but then his parents died and he moved schools in second grade. I tried talking to him when he started Midtown but he’s like super shy.”

“I feel like I know him,” she says. “There was this – I don’t know, it was like a connection.” She doesn’t tell Ned that she thinks Peter is cute, or that his dark eyes and sweet smile had made her pulse quicken.

He smirks anyway; he’s not her best friend for nothing. “We should talk to him at school,” he tells her, drying his hands on a paper towel. “I saw him wearing a _Star Wars_ shirt before Christmas break. I need someone in my life that appreciates the greatest cinematic franchise of all time.”

Ned’s her absolute favorite nerd. He’s the easiest person in the world to be friends with – he’s all sweet, open affection, the perfect counterpoint to her more closed-off nature, and his kindness is infectious. She’d usually rib him about the _Star Wars_ comment, but she gives him a pass this time, because he’s being all earnest and shit, and making friends with Peter Parker seems somehow inevitable.

“Yeah,” she says, contemplative. “Yeah, we should do that.”

Ned gives her one of his beaming, toothy smiles and pats her shoulder. “First day back, we’ll sit with him at lunch,” he says, returning to his kneading. “He always looks like he needs a friend.”

MJ watches him work, her mind still on the boy who’d burst through the door and looked at her like he’d found a long-lost treasure.

Peter Parker was a mystery.

She wanted to solve him.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an angsty little piece I knocked out in two hours based off the set pictures that were released today. Complete speculation based on no facts and an innate distrust of the people in charge.
> 
> I want Spider-Man 3 to be a Christmas rom-com. Please, universe.


End file.
